Family for Rent

What do you do when you have plenty of money and an empty life? Family for Rent (Une famille à louer, 2015) is a French tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. Wealthy but hopelessly lonely Paul-André, bored out of his mind, decides what he lacks is a family — so he rents one.

Violette is forty, raising two kids under a pile of debt and the real threat of losing both her home and custody. Paul-André offers her a strictly business arrangement: he clears her debts, and she and the children play the part of his family. The contract is cold and precise, yet flesh-and-blood people keep refusing to fit its clauses. Benoît Poelvoorde and Virginie Efira carry the pair from icy awkwardness toward something genuine, and watching that thaw is the film's chief pleasure.

Behind the camera is Jean-Pierre Améris, who has a knack for stories about shy misfits; this Belgian-French film runs ninety-odd minutes and holds a soft, warm tone throughout. It suits anyone who loves European melodramas where laughter sits beside sorrow and happiness is built out of inconvenient compromises. Stream Family for Rent (2015) online on iFILM.